A Long time in politics: The Speaker House Blues

Sadie Smith’s Roundup of the Parliamentary Week / @smithsky1979

This is a special recess edition of your favourite Parliamentary sketch which is appearing on LabourList slightly later than its normal scheduling to ensure that the thrills, spills, and inadvertant comedy stylings of journalist, politician, and blogger alike can be comprehensively chronicled … and emphatically not because your correspondent had slight work/life balance issues last week and hasn’t had the chance to pen the bugger until now.

Right, so at the end of the last episode we saw Telegraph journalists determined to continue to hit the headlines – with all the gentleness and subtlety of that lubed-up fat dude banging the gong at beginning of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” – over the scandal that everybody has named “Expensesgate.” Seriously, people – can’t we do better than that? I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that calling the online dalliances of McDraper “Smeargate” lacked a certain amount of imagination, and then along comes a mindblowing series of scoops and the best that the blogosphere and the MSM can come up with between them is Expensesgate? How about “The End of the Wisteria Affair” or “Escape from Duck Island“? Competition time, folks: please send your entries on a postcard to LabourList, The Broomcupboard, Somewhere in SW1. The winner will receive a signed copy of the fag packet Cameron wrote his recently announced constitutional plans on, and a commemorative piece of Kitty Ussher’s Artex ceiling.

Meanwhile, far away from that hotbed of raw talent and imagination that is the press gallery, a different storm was brewing. Fearsome warrior, Joanna the Lumley had regrouped her fearless band of Gurkha warriors and was ready for victory over the heart of both Gordon Brown and every male journalist of a certain age. Well, it’s cheaper than buying a sports car, I suppose.

BEYOND PARODY: EXPENSES SCANDAL AND “GATEGATE”
The collapsing slurry heap that constitutes the steady stream of revelations over what MPs like to spend our money on continues unabated. This week we learnt that Tory Anthony Steen’s house looks like Balmoral only from only certain angles (as opposed to Smith Towers which resembles a badly thought-through experiment in pebble-dashing from nearly all angles), and Sir Peter Viggers claimed that his birds are not cheap dates: the £1,645 “duck island” he bought on expenses was dealt the shortest of shrifts by the local mallards. Ungrateful sods.

In other news, Tom Freeman takes the obsession with corking the word “gate” after every suspected political transgression to it’s logical conclusion following the revelation that the loveable Conservative Jonathan Djanogly got himself … a gate.

Political coverage has eaten itself, people.

THE SPEAKER’S CORNERED
It would be fair to say that this hasn’t been the best of weeks for Speaker Martin. Happening to wander past the table Douglas Carswell had just vacated in the Commons library, his suspicions were initially aroused by the sight of an AA routeplanner dealing the quickest drive to Beachy Head lying next to a tome entitled “Scapegoat-hurling: the forgotten art of political distraction” (via Shuggy).

And Carswell was by no means alone. Whilst the rest of the country was deploring the fact that a significant minority of our elected politicians appear to be less interested in the change we need than they are in ordering gold-plated hookers on the ACA, Members of Parliament were getting themselves worked into a lather over the rumour that Michael Martin was FORCING the poor lambs to wantonly abuse their expenses. In fact, to hear some of the coverage, a visitor from abroad might have been forgiven for departing home with the distinct impression that Mick was running an illicit trade in plasma TV screens and champagne flutes out of the back of a battered Ford Capri bearing the legend “Speaker’s Independent Trading Co.”.

Much drama.

The first statement of the week came in the wake of the news that Carswell’s Early Day Motion calling for the head of Michael Martin had about twenty names and that he had tabled a remaining order of the day which, whilst a substantive motion unlike the EDM, was unlikely to be called for debate unless it had Government support. Bored? Good.

After getting his Parliamentary undergarments in a wangle over the difference between these two motions, Martin then had to sit through a bunch of points of order of a most discouraging nature, almost all of which contained the word “resign”. The next day, the Speaker returned to the Chamber to make a brief statement that announced his intention to stand down in June, after which he had to sit through another bunch of tributes from MPs which were bowel-clenching in their insincerity.

But it’s okay! Because the Bad Guy responsible for all the crap stuff recently had been vanquished and representative democracy has been saved by the Jedi knights with their light sabres of responsible politics and honestly, that’s probably how the electorate see it as well. Right?

Denial. For some MPs it really IS just a river in Egypt.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS?
In politics you sometimes have to be careful what you wish for. The Telegraph, not a paper noted for whoeheartedly embracing radical constitutional reform, has been increasingly filled with slightly panicked articles filed by hacks concerned that their newshounding might have inadvertantly re-opened the kind of debate that sees Helena Kennedy on the telly a lot and senior Cabinet Ministers trying to tap into the conversations on the merits of the Alternative Vote system that are raging in supermarkets up and down the land (as opposed to rants about how most politicians are a bunch of thieving scumbags. Which emphatically aren’t happening).

In related news, Cameron announced that he was “actively considering” Parliamentary reforms that would see text updates on the progress of legislation being sent out to the populace. This is a move which, amongst others, will rejuvenate political discourse and watercooler conversations alike, and Hopi Sen is already a big fan not to mention Tom Harris.

GURKHARAMA
She came, she saw, she conquered: all hail Joanna the Lumley – whose campaign to allow the Gurkhas the same settlement rights as every other foreign national serving in the British army was victorious this week. There were jubilant scenes outside the House of Commons and justice was done. Well done the Gord for coming to the right decision … not, what with everything else going on, there was as much notice paid to this as there should have been. A bad day to bury good news.

ON THE ADJOURNMENT (ODDS ‘N’ SODS)
One of the more enjoyable diversions from the increasingly grim business of Westminster politics this week was watching the right-wing blogosphere swallow a hoax, claim it wasn’t a hoax, and then – when it became apparent that it was – blame those evil “leftists” for being behind it. In other news, the Oxford English Dictionary has announced it’s removing the word “gullible”.

And in good news for the political status quo, Simon Heffer has announced that he’s thinking of standing as a sort of Martin Bell character against Sir Alan Haslehurst. Trebles all round for the Telegraph commentators; if that doesn’t send the electorate screaming in the direction of the nearest mainstream politician, nothing will.